Nowadays, a variety of appliances have a remote control (abbreviated to “remocon”). A remote control is used separately from an appliance main body thereof, and thus whereabouts of the remote control are sometimes not known. Particularly, the remote control of an on-vehicle appliance (a TV set, a DVD player, or the like used for a rear seat occupant), mounted on an automobile, sometimes also serves as the operation panel of the appliance in itself, and thus when the remote control is lost, the appliance cannot be operated. For this reason, some on-vehicle appliances have a mechanism where a remote control is assembled or incorporated to the part of the appliance main body, the remote control is separated from the main body when in use, and it is assembled to and held in the main body when not in use.
In the mechanism where a remote control is thus assembled to an appliance main body, it is desirable that the remote control can be held so as not to be dislodged by vehicle vibration under a condition where the remote control is assembled to the main body, and otherwise the remote control can be easily detached therefrom when it is used.
FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 illustrate an example of a conventional structure where a remote control is held by an apparatus main body. A remote control 101 is held by a concave remote control holder 102 provided on the side of an apparatus main body. The remote control 101 has stopper holes 103 provided on one side thereof, and stopper pins 104 engage in the respective stopper holes 103. The stopper pin 104 is extruded from the stopper hole 103 by pushing a release button 105. The remote control 101 has an engaging hole 106 provided at each end thereof, and engaging pins 108 each energized with resilient force by a coil spring 107 are engaged in the respective engaging holes 106. To be specific, the remote control 101 is held as it is pinched from both ends thereof between the engaging pins 108.
In that remote control holding mechanism, when the release button 105 is pushed to extrude the stopper pin 104 from the stopper hole 103, the remote control 101 is rotated about the engaging pins 108. After that, the remote control 101 is pulled, the engaging pins 108 are thereby pressed to be retracted by an engagement between the engaging hole 106 and the engaging pin 108 corresponding thereto, and then the remote control 101 becomes dislodged from the engaging pins 108. Since the remote control 101 should be moved perpendicularly with respect to the engaging pin 108 in order to remove the remote control 101 therefrom, the engaging pin 108 is arranged to have an inclined shape.
In this connection, as another example of a conventional remote control holding structure, Patent Document 1 discloses a structure where a resilient pawl engages in a concavity provided in the side of a remote control and the pawl is opened to release the retention of the remote control.
Patent Document 1: JP-A-06-292283
In the conventional remote control holding mechanism shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5, a detaching direction of the remote control 101 and a direction where a force is exerted on the remote control by the engaging pins 108 (or a sliding direction of each of the engaging pins) are different (perpendicular to each other), and thus the resisting force produced when the remote control 101 is detached is determined by the shape of the tip of the engaging pin 108. Further, the remote control 101 sometimes comes near to one of the engaging pins 108, and thus the amount of a load imposed on one side of the remote control by the engaging pin 108 can be different from that imposed on the other side thereof. At that time, the force required when the remote control 101 is detached becomes unbalanced on right and left sides. In other words, adjusting the force of holding the remote control 101 by using the resilient force of the coil springs 107 exerted on the engaging pins 108 is very difficult, and further a detaching property of the remote control 101 cannot also be stabilized by adjusting the resilient force alone.
Note that in the holding mechanism of the holder disclosed in Patent Document 1, the remote control is inserted therein and extracted therefrom vertically with respect to the case of the remote control, and thus it is difficult to apply the mechanism to an on-vehicle appliance such as an appliance secured to the ceiling of a vehicle. In other words, dislodgement of the pawl from the concavity places the remote control in a state where the remote control falls off. When the mechanism is substantially horizontally provided along the ceiling surface, there is the possibility that the remote control easily falls from the ceiling by the vibration of a vehicle.
The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a remote control retainer eliminating the necessities of providing an engaging pin having a complicated shape and of adjusting the resilient force involved therein.